Bruises
by Tari Silmarwen
Summary: Sabine notices a few of them on Ezra after their trip to Concord Dawn.


(A/N)- How 'bout them Imperial Supercommandos, eh?

Just a little plot bunny that popped into my head after last week's episode. Sabine would have totally wasted Saxon if she'd caught him throwing Ezra around like he did, I have no doubt. So here she is getting to see the aftermath.

Sabezra hints because I'm _me_ and hell yes Geek Boy/Stoic Girl ships gimme more, but you can totally read it as platonic too.

Disclaimer: Rebels and other Star Wars properties belong to Disney.

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 **Bruises**

It was a day after they'd brought Fen Rau back to the Rebellion when Sabine noticed Ezra's face was becoming unusually... _colorful_.

Sitting across from him in the _Ghost_ 's living area, Sabine frowned at the purpling bruise.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

Lost in thought, nursing his mug of caf, Ezra started to attention.

"Huh?"

Sabine tapped the side of her face to indicate. Mimicking her motion, Ezra raised a hand to his injured cheek-wincing when his fingers brushed the bruise, Sabine couldn't fail to notice.

"Oh, that." Ezra dropped his arm with a shrug. "Must've happened back on Concord Dawn."

Sabine frowned, replaying the events of yesterday over in her head and wondering when exactly he could have acquired it. He'd landed pretty hard on the mesa when Saxon had shot them down, but then she'd been right beside him and her face had yet to take on those new and interesting painful fleshtones. Her helmet could have cushioned some of it, she reasoned. But Ezra's bruise looked like more than a simple impact mark. It had a distinct pattern. Metallic-looking.

Like the floors inside the Protector camp's huts.

Sabine stiffened. "Saxon?" she guessed. An image of the man appeared in her head and she found her fingers clenching. _Did_ _ **he**_ _do that to you?_ she fumed.

"Yeah, he roughed me up a little bit," Ezra said, smiling faintly. He didn't seem too shaken up by the fact.

 _More than a little bit_ , Sabine growled inside her head, now noticing other marks on him-a small cut on the side of his lip, raw rings on his wrists, fingerprints on his neck.

She bit her lip a moment. "Hold on," she declared, popping up from the table. "I'll get something for it."

"No that's okay-" he tried to protest, watching her cross over to the kitchen and fetch something back. "It's really not a big-"

Sabine sat inches from him, already dipping her fingers in the little pot of face cream and reaching them out to him.

"-deal," Ezra finished in defeat, holding still as she dabbed the peach-colored cream on his cheek.

She smiled, spreading the concealer across his bruise. She couldn't do anything to help it heal, but at least this would hide it for a while until it did on its own. "C'mon Ez," she teased. "You don't really want to walk about with a big purple blotch on your face do you?"

"Lucky you caught it before Hera noticed," Ezra muttered, slouching in the booth. "She'd never let me hear the end of it." He glanced up at her pointedly. "Not that you're much better."

"Shouldn't you be used to this crew fussing over you by now?" Sabine joked. She fell quiet a moment and focused on her work, her smile fading. Another dab of facepaint was put to Ezra's temple and carefully-almost gently-spread around.

Ezra didn't reply, his face just barely pinching as Sabine's fingers brushed over his sensitive skin.

Sabine lightened the pressure she was using accordingly, her touch feather-soft now. "You didn't have to get yourself captured you know," she told him softly.

"Yeah I did," he dismissed. "Well, I mean..." he corrected quickly, "...I wasn't _planning_ on getting captured, just drawing Saxon and his goons away from you." He shrugged again. "No point in them confusing you for a Protector and killing you too, right?"

Sabine's face turned aside, her cheeks coloring faintly. The words made something in her heart warm a bit.

"He could have killed _you_ ," she pointed out, her voice maybe a little too harsh, her eyes a little too hard as she turned back to him. The brief flash of worried anger at him subsided, and she dropped her gaze. Guilt sludged around in the base of her chest, gnawing at her ribcage. "I should've rushed in to get you right away."

"Sabine, all he did was kick me around a little," Ezra said, slightly exasperated. "I've had worse beatings back on the streets of Lothal."

Her mouth twisted wryly. "Yeah, but now he knows you're a Jedi." Finishing up, she put the pot down on the table to free up her hands. "And _that_ can't be good."

Ezra grinned cheekily. "What's another bounty on my head?"

Sabine's mouth puckered. She half wanted to chastise him for being so flippant about it, but then she had no room to talk. The list of contracts on her own head was probably just as long.

Ezra was unusually quiet a moment, his grin gone, tracing scratches on the table with his fingertips.

"Thanks for coming back for me," he said soberly, eyes down.

Something in her riled. _Of course I did!_ she almost snapped. _Did you expect I wouldn't?!_ But she bit her lip, remembering Ezra's issues with abandonment. After all this time he still had trouble believing they wouldn't just leave him behind. _Oh Ezra..._ she sighed to herself.

She had a sudden crazy urge to just wrap him up in her arms and pet his hair reassuringly, but she resisted it in favor of commenting lightly, "Rau wanted to leave you behind."

"He did, huh?" Ezra said.

"Yeah." She grinned. "But I wouldn't let him."

"I'm glad," he told her. "I think that's what convinced him to join us."

"Always good to have more friends," Sabine quipped, leaning back to look at her makeup work.

The concealer was just a little bit lighter than Ezra's skintone but she'd blended it well enough so that you couldn't tell unless you squinted closely. She mulled over the bruises on his neck a moment before deciding they were faint enough not to bother.

She still felt an angry prickling inside her heart looking at them.

 _Next time I see Saxon,_ she decided, _I'm shooting him in the face._

No one hurt Ezra on her watch.

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(A/N)- Please remember to leave reviews if you liked it!


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